![\"Front](\"http:\/\/www.60impala.com\/arc\/FrontPanPatched.JPG\" "\\"Front")
<\/p>\nInstalled the floor pans today. Still have to do the one under the rear seat, which shouldn’t take much time. The new patch panels fit well and look pretty close to the originals on the other side of the car, but the embossing is not as crisp. Why is it that they can’t make them identical? Not that it matters on a floor pan so much, but even so.<\/p>\n
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I still have to finish welding them in, but they are tacked in pretty good. I chose not to butt-weld them because that would be far too much work for floor pan on this car, and cutting and fitting them close enough for that would be a huge challenge to my limited skills at this point. Heck, I am just learning to weld!<\/p>\n
![\"Rear](\"http:\/\/www.60impala.com\/arc\/RearPanPatched.JPG\" "\\"Rear")
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The rear pan took a fair amount of work. I had to cut out the lower portion of the rear door brace to get full access to the area. This brace is only used on the Sport Sedan models since there is no window post to help support it. Behind that brace, the vertical area of the floor pan was rusted through. Removing the brace allowed me to properly patch that area and fit the new panel in easily. The brace itself has a fair amount of rust damage on it, which I will patch with some heavy-gauge steel soon. Just ahead of the brace is a complex shaped piece that is not available in reproduction. Luckily I was able to salvage this piece from the parts car. It was barely savable… pretty thin metal, and difficult to weld in place without blowing holes in it. There are still some other small patches that need installed. The corner of the reproduction panel has a rather large gap that I will have to make a small piece to patch. There is also a small triangular area just above the new panel that had rusted through and was cut-out. Of course, all areas were treated with Picklex-20 rust converter before being capped over with the new metal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"